If you haven’t checked out Risley Theatre yet, you should. The perks? It’s free, it’s warm and you might just get to see a purple Teletubby go on a murderous rampage.

Or at least you would have if you went to see the Risley One-Acts this weekend. This past Friday and Saturday, the student dorm put on “Feldman vs. Cordero,” a series of three one-acts written by Ezra Dan Feldman MFA ’07 and Will Cordeiro MFA ’09, currently a PhD student and the Risley Artist-In-Residence (and staff writer for The Sun). The one-acts, ranging from the experimental to the comical, used the small stage venue to actively engage the audience.

Ghost, written and directed by Feldman, featured actors Ariana Marmora ’11, Blake Wondrasch ’11, Jonathan Tai ’11, Julia Rizzo ’11 and X Li ’11. Out of the three one acts, Ghosts proved to be the most serious and experimental. Taking a casual approach, the actors read off of scripts, and a narrator (Wondrasch) read stage and lighting instructions to help the audience better imagine what the setting would have looked like with a more advanced system. The action centers around Baby (Tai), whose mother has died. To complicate matters, the body has disappeared while under the watch or Mr. Bloch (Li), who was in charge of preparing it for burial. Though the plot itself was difficult to follow, the one act ends with Baby and Mr. Bloch recovering the body after strange encounters with a ghost (Rizzo) and a supernatural guide (Marmora).

From the script-reading to the casual costumes and scarce props, Ghost definitely had an intimate coffeehouse feel. The serious content of the one-act gave the actors a chance to show their range and abilities. Though the plot was somewhat difficult to follow, the disjointedness added to the experimental, artistic vibe.

Following Ghost were two one-acts written by Cordeiro: Rando Black and The Descepter. Directed by Ithaca College graduate David Kossack, Rando Black featured actors Cole Long, Erik Bjarnar, Jessi-Michelle Pollack ’07 and Stephanie Liff ’11.

The act opens with Norman (Bjarnar), a cashier at a store. When Rando Black, a melodramatic thug (Long), bursts on the scene and attempts to hold up the store, the oblivious Norman instead proceeds to ring up the gun and instruct the thug on proper gun-handling. Black, overdramatic and over-literary, is further outdone when a purple tough-talking Teletubby (Pollack) rushes on stage, siezes his gun and kills the cashier. The Teletubby — part Jekyll, part Hyde — exits singing children’s songs and spinning in circles.

As if a murderous Teletubby weren’t enough, the thug next finds himself in the company of a mermaid (Liff). Black laments his sordid past to his new mermaid friend. A Marine dropout, he abandoned his duties only to get into a horrible accident. Post-surgery, he found himself unable to sleep and entered a life of crime. After making love to the mermaid, Black is encouraged to challenge the Teletubby to a duel, and the mermaid agrees to be his second. When the mermaid is killed by the teletubby, the thug is left mourning his love. A tragic hero, albeit a comical one, Black dies by the electric chair, administered by Norman (back from the dead and munching on a sandwich) and the vengeful Teletubby.

A marked departure from the seriousness of the first one-act, Rando Black had the audience laughing along with it. The characters — often extreme and overwrought — truly made the one-act worth watching, if only to see just how a thug, mermaid and Teletubby could all be woven together into one plot.

Bjarnar, Pollack and Cordeiro — building off their momentum from Rando Black — returned for the finale, The Descepter. Written and directed by Cordeiro, the third one act followed the extreme characterization and comedic effect of the second. The plot plays off a classic power struggle. When a court jester (Liff) convinces the king (Bjarnar) to abandon his throne and go into disguise, the jester assumes kingship. The plot thickens when a commoner named Crud (Cordeiro) usurps the throne from the jester, only to lose it once more. Though the plot of The Descepter lacked what the first two had in complexity, its actors more than made up for it with their energy. Cordeiro, who shrieked and hopped around stage much to the amusement of the audience, certainly provided comedic relief.

Though the playbill for “Feldman vs. Cordeiro” depicted a pair of boxers slugging it out in the ring, the referee here is out on who should be declared the victor. Both directors put on an admirable show, but neither won the duel: That honor belongs to the Teletubby.